Zeiss 21 2.8 on D800/E

[MGrayson]

Take a RAW shot of a print of the JPEG... with a Zeiss Makro Planar 100.... :facesmack:

From what I've heard about the Zeiss 100, it will get more information out of the print than is in the original file. :ROTFL:

 

[tashley]

From what I've heard about the Zeiss 100, it will get more information out of the print than is in the original file. :ROTFL:

Yup, it's a microscope not a lens. Just hope you like plenty of LoCa with your molecules...:ROTFL:

 

[gurtch]

Jan, that's exactly why I got the Zeiss 18mm at the time. It was for when I didn't want to take the 14-24 when I had to use a fast single focal length 24mm. The 18mm provided proper spacing between the focal lengths 18
& 24mm..the 2o/21mm didn't.

Keep in mind my coments comparing the Zeiss 18mm and Zeiss 21mm were when used on D700/D3s bodies. How the Zeiss 18mm performs on the D800, I don't know yet.

Dave (D&A)

Dave
Ironic that you and I must think along the same lines. I preorderd a D800E, and purchased at the same time a Nikon 14-24, and a Zeiss 18 mm. My pashion is seascapes, where i tend to use wide lenses. When I shot Canon (1DS, 1DSII, and 1DSIII) I used a 17-40. I now use Sony A 900, and use the Zeiss 16-35 most often. Lately, I have been working with an interior designer, doing interior photography for multi million dollar homes. For this purpose i bought a Sigma 12-24 mm, which works very well. As I transition, the 18 mm will be my seascape lens (filter thread---VERY important to me), and the 14-24 my go to lens for interiors. Great site where ladies and gentleman hang out.
Dave in NJ

 

[Jérôme.E]

First, Thank you Guy, Dave and Roger for your answers :thumbup:

The 28/2 ,35/2 and 85/1.4 are all great for street shooting ..very short throw fast to focus and I get a high contrast view on a Nikon Pro body . I have decades of experience in manual focusing a SLR and still have near perfect eyes ...probably not relevant for most photographers . Most would be better served with the G glass.

I'm not afraid of manual focusing and I use it often with MF and Dslr, and for street personal work I like the fact that "error focused" image could be better than the perfect one.

Prior to the new G nano coated primes ..I wouldn t touch the Nikon primes because of the lower contrast and funky yellow tint ..but the new G primes closed the gap and offer alternative character (in the eye of the beholder) . I still favor the Zeiss but you lose the fantastic AF capabilities of the new bodies and getting it in focus matters . For money its the Nikkors and AF all the way ..for character and brilliance I like the Zeiss glass.

As Guy, I want to build my D800 personal system around a 35mm (ideally 18-20 / 35 / 100) ... I need wider than 24 so in case i'll go with the Nik G's i'm forced to mix... If Nikon could launch a 17TS soon...

I find its not good to mix them too much as the look is enough different to mess up a collection ...but I am a believer in using a matched set of lenses and consistency in rendering . The newer Zeiss glass is being driven by the Cinema requirements so you need to understand the character of the lens . Zeiss does a great job of providing this on their website .

Confirm what i thought

Thanks

Jérome

 

[woodyspedden]

If you are comparing to a D3/d700 experience you may be surprised ......not in a positive way ...weaknesses not visible at 12MP can become bothersome at 36MP. I experienced this with the d3X . I also have a D7000 which has the same sensor at the pixel level ..so when I look at 100% is not that much different .

Diglloyd did a run down on the zeiss glass for the D800..which I think is blogged not subscription and he knows the zeiss lenses as well as anyone . he went through each lens and gave a short POV.

I can t follow at all the logic of how a lens that wash t great on a 12mp sensor would be better on a 36mp sensor . Maybe the corrections are occurring in the camera processor or in post processing .
....

No much is said about handling or character . For example in the 35mm range ...the Zeiss 35/2 handles like a dream ..its small ,pretty light and has a short throw . This is a lens I can follow focus on a kite boarder and get a high percentage of sharp images. It has too much CA and can get some color twists in the shadows ...I try to shoot it at F5.6 . It has the classic clinical zeiss look and bokeh is not noteworthy.The 35/1.4 zeiss is huge and heavy ...a lens that needs a purpose . It has a fantastic bokeh making it a nice Cafe cruiser ..but its slow with a long throw . Rich colors my favorite for character . See the examples on the Zeiss site .The Nikon has a nice all around balance to my eye it has deeper color than older Nikkors and superb micro contrast . This is a lens that can stay on the camera where you can leverage all the AF bells and whistles .

All three lenses are plenty sharp enough for my usage ..but that have different personalities . I also come from a street,travel POV and you might think differently if you will be on a tripod doing landscape etc. or in a studio working with models .

roger et al

Digilloyds site is definitely subscription. He has a blog which gives (very) skimpy information but the real stuff is in DAP, which is his subscription site. On that site he has thoroughly reviewed the D800, and especially the lenses likely to perform best with it in addition to the Nikon lenses. Very worthwhile.

I have been shooting the Zeiss ZF series for a number of years. (All of mine are the ZF1 whose optical formulae are identical to the ZF 2 but without the automation). I have the 18 which i really like (although I hear the 15 is much better); the 28 which is a really good lens; the 50 Makro which is a superb lens (and yes the focus throw is long so it is not so fast to focus as the 50 1.4) and finally the 100 2.0 which is a lens in a class by itself. This may be the best medium telephoto out there, including the Leica 100 APO Makro which I have also owned back in the DMR days. I owned the C/Y 21 2.8 lens back in my Contax days but have not evaluated the new version in ZF form. Mustache distortion was prevalent in the early lens but the other lens attributes made it one of the most popular of the C/Y lenses in spite of it's price. The new ZF2 21 has the same mustache distortion and I suspect or at least hope it has the counterbalancing attributes of its older cousin.

Woody

 

[woodyspedden]

You know I have to brag slightly here since this was the real revolution of the famous Zeiss 21mm. Lots of sales went on after I posted this on Fred Miranda and honestly given what canon had in the 1DS days you can see why. This image I have to admit is the quintessential Zeiss 21mm shot. So I do have the tag grandaddy of the Zeiss 21mm and bolting in on the 1DS with a adapter. Today its the same formula as it was back than and I'm guessing 5/6 years ago. But obviously they actually made a mount for Canon and Nikon. Have no idea where they thought of that one. Okay I'm entitled to brag once a year , my 15 minutes of fame are over see ya next year. So there. ROTFLMAO

Falcon Biz Jet I think a Falcon 900B. There is some photoshop in this but the detail is real. LOL

Took awhile to find this again. Man love to reshoot this with my tech cam now and my 28mm which equals a 18mm on my sensor

Guy

I remember this very well. It was, and is, truly representative of the best of the C/Y 21 2.8 shots. I hope the new ZF2 formula is the same as the old because it would be hard to improve upon.

Woody

 

[glenerrolrd]

Woody

Diglloyd has a page or two on the Zeiss glass on a D800 thats not subscription . I didn t renew the Zeiss part of his site so I know the part I read was free ..just a summary sentence or two on the lenses .

The new 21 ZF is the pick of the litter ..it may have distortion but it has not bothered me in images around the pier ....its just too big . I like the 18 on a tripod stopped down to f8 very nice. Both lenses have the large front elements (82mm? ) .

 

[Jérôme.E]

Back to the Zeiss 35 1,4... after some web research I won't go with this lens 'cause of the purple fringing (out of focus plane) - very important - most of "tests" have shown. It is THE thing I hate to see in a file... disappointing!.
So now i'll probably go with the 28 f/2.
I've red many good things - optically - about Samyang 35 1,4... any feedback. As Guy would say... just curious!! Lol

 

[gustavo]

I´m still waiting the zeiss 21 2.8 lens to be available in any serious store. Meanwhile, I would like to try how well the lens distortion is corrected in pcs5 or L4. Could anyone upload a raw file with an architecture picture which has been taken with this lens?

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Im wonder about CS6 being able to do the distortion I read somewhere but did not read all about a new wide angle distortion correction in it. Love for someone that has it to comment on it than I may upgrade to it.

 

[D&A]

Dave
Ironic that you and I must think along the same lines. I preorderd a D800E, and purchased at the same time a Nikon 14-24, and a Zeiss 18 mm. My pashion is seascapes, where i tend to use wide lenses. When I shot Canon (1DS, 1DSII, and 1DSIII) I used a 17-40. I now use Sony A 900, and use the Zeiss 16-35 most often. Lately, I have been working with an interior designer, doing interior photography for multi million dollar homes. For this purpose i bought a Sigma 12-24 mm, which works very well. As I transition, the 18 mm will be my seascape lens (filter thread---VERY important to me), and the 14-24 my go to lens for interiors. Great site where ladies and gentleman hang out.
Dave in NJ

Dave,

Am really interested to hear from you and others about how well the Zeiss 18mm does on the D800/D800E. There are some advantages of using the 18mm over the Zeiss 21mm. Agreed, the filter solution with the Zeiss 18 and 21 is certainly a consideration for outdoor photography vs. the Nikon 14-24mm.

Interesting you should mentioned the Sigma 12-24mm. When the original version was released (they've since modified it), it wasn't a half bad performer. Sample to sample variation was all over the place in those days and some of the best samples still had soft edges/corners..usually one side was worse than the other. Still a lot could be done with the resulting images in post processing and when one considers what was then it's relatively low price point, the lens was actually something of a near bargain, Of course optics in wide angle zooms have greatly superseded the performance of this lens.


Thanks again Dave and let us know how it goes with the 18mm!

Dave (D&A)

 

[danielmoore]

Guy, I've used the adaptive WA filter and while it'll do the job, it requires a lot of hand holding, setting alignment guides for things that should be straight. They are basic adjustment tools and don't offer more than 3 points of adjustment for any given straight element so moustache correction would require a few adjustment lines, with tweaking for each. A lens correction preset would be far more efficient. It looks like a mesh can be generated and saved if one high quality correction were built. Dropping an image into PTgui, I was able to build a moustache correction preset in a few minutes and output what some (i.e., me) may feel is a better quality image using sinc 256 interpolation as opposed to PS's bicubic.

Dave, I'm a die hard 14-24 believer and have found for the times it's critical, the new Fotodiox filter adapter is a good solution. It's filter size, at least for now, means using their filters, which are not the best but are useable.

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Daniel thanks for adding that data i was afraid it was more than drawing one line and being done. That helps me in a buy decision . I keep coming back to my tech cam in the extreme wide stuff. Just a lot of stuff I can do with it but thats okay reason I'm not letting go of it.

 

[oneANT]

The Zeiss 21 is clearly designed for landscape or subjects at a distance ...it does not handle well as a walk around lens. It is large with a huge 82mm front element making it almost impossible to use for street shooting and not much fun for even travel.

Maybe the gravity is different over this side of the planet, maybe focus turns the other way ...maybe its the water.

But this is my favourite street lens...

and its great for taking pics of ants too ....

and on the topic of moustache distortion ...lol.

Ant.
ɹǝpun uʍop puɐl ǝɥʇ ɯoɹɟ

 

[D&A]

Love that 1st shot! Something so sureal about that gentleman and the look that was captured. I noticed similary dressed individuals in the backgrapund with the same hat...something interesting going on at that location?

Dave (D&A)

 

[Trakl]

Hooray for the lowly 20/2.8D! I love that little lens and can't wait to put it on my D800e when it arrives. I've spent way too much time today researching a fancier wide angle lens for my new camera. I feel like I should go apologize to my faithful 20mm.

To the topic, it is why my present wide prime is the 20/2.8D. It has significant curvature and still corners that remain soft at 100% view from the D800. However in print they are barely noticed with a lens that wide, and usually a part of the image that is wholly unimportant to the subject. The bigger benefit to the 20/2.8D is it is relatively flare resistant, especially compared to the Zeiss wides, and with a lens that wide I often find myself with a bright light source or even the Sun in the frame -- and the little 20 handles that situation quite well.